Bart, Berkeley and Revelry

June 24, 2017.  

It took us a few minutes to actually get Muni's app to work on the cellphone, but once we did it getting around SF at reduced senior citizen's rates is so easy.  Muni, the San Francisco bus, tram, cable car and trolley bus network gets you around at the reduced senior rate of only $1 for each 90 minutes of travel.  More expensive than Washington, but not much.  And you just tap on your phone to say you are using a ticket and on you go.

We had thought to use BART's senior rate too, but that required a base purchase of $9-worth of tickets and we were only using $8-worth to our destination, Berkeley, so not this time.  No reason to.  

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The flags were flying up and down Market Street when we got downtown yesterday.  Of course, it was all for us:  Every rainbow flag said "Thanks, Ben and John for gracing our city."   Laugh.   We walked toward the Embarcadero station for our trip to Berkeley, passing the end of Battery Street where John worked from 1970 to 1972 and even glancing at the building he worked in.  

BART trains are old.  We think of our original Metro cars in Washington DC as ready for the heap, but BART cars are even older than our 1976 vintage.  The majority date from 1972 when the system opened and they look it.  However, they work.  Like the 120-year old cable cars and the 60-year old rehabilitated street cars on Market Street.

U.Cal. Berkeley is beautiful.  
Set on the side of the East Hills overlooking San Francisco bay, the turn-of-the-last-century architecture, mostly Beaux Arts, contrasts with the Italianate hillsides. Of course, much of the modern, brutalist architecture, of which there is a good deal, only semi-fits but some of it is quite grand and a good bit of it seems to fit Ben's taste, though not John's.   

We were, of course, only semi-prepared for our visit, so a very nice bear in the Mathematics Library helped us with a map of the campus and some directions.  We did not manage to hear a campanile concert, but we did enter some of the grand buildings and were awed by their interiors.  It's a very pretty place.  And apparently ready to Resist! too.




Lunch at the PiQ Café: The lovely broken-heart design cappuccino froth the barista made for Ben was a work of art.   John's prosciutto baguette was also very good for a light lunch.   We headed back to San Francisco to take a look at the addition to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.  Short of time, we did not venture in, but it is very fitting and an architecturally sound addition.  

It's totally unlike much of the modern architecture sprouting here.  A good bit of it is tasteless.  The new skyscrapers are ghastly.  The old Bank of America building and the Transamerica Pyramid that were widely disliked in the 60s and 70s are now miniatures compared to the size of some of the new carbuncles, to quote Prince Charles.  Just wait until the subsoil liquifies in an earthquake.  

The new housing, too, going up on every piece of vacant land gives only lip-service to the bay-windowed Victoriana that has been an identifiable mark of the city's residential sections since the 1906 earthquake.  They do have bay windows, but there is nothing that is quaint or lovable about them.  And at $5000 a month for 800 square feet, it's a shame.  Fortunately we are not staying in one of those buildings. 

After a short nap, we headed out to dinner with our old Washington friends Dixon and Jeremy at one of their local bistros in the Hayes Valley.  Revelry is French-fusion I suppose. The maitre-d' is from Strasbourg, and knows his stuff.  The chef turned out a series of lovely dishes, starting with a crudo of kingfish, moving on to a lovely home-made pâté de fois, and a roasted artichoke stuffed with cream cheese and parmesan.  This was washed down with a dry Seillac sparkling Burgundy rosé.   We moved on from that to the mains:  Ben had a lovely wild mushroom risotto, while John enjoyed gnocchi in a sauce of arugula, wild mushrooms, fresh Spring peas, and cream.  Jeremy dug into a duck confit and goat salad and Dixon enjoyed a nicely done filet mignon.   We had a small, shared, clafouti for dessert.  Dixon had brought a Dehlinger Syrah from Sebastopol, California, to go with the main meal, which fit it very well.  It was great to spend an evening with them.